4 ms·

Conveying respect is not a fashion. The fashions are in who you're supposed to respect and how you're supposed to show it. You can read more about this here:

by pg 13y ago

Conveying respect is not a fashion. The fashions are in who you're supposed to respect and how you're supposed to show it. You can read more about this here: http://paulgraham.com/say.html http://paulgraham.com/say.html

comicjk 13y ago
How about respecting all people, if it's no trouble to you, in the way they want to be respected? And by the way, wordsmith, it's "the fashions are in whom you're supposed to respect."
- pg 13y ago
  I don't think you'd actually want to do that. There have been throughout history lots of people who on account of their birth or religion have wanted to be treated as superior to some other group. Would you just want to go along with that? In fact it would be impossible to do what you suggest, because the ways in which people want to be respected could be (and often have been) incompatible. For example, what if two people with different religions both want to be treated as believers in the one true religion? There are also plenty of individual cases we'd both find hard to swallow. Murderers who wanted to be regarded as upstanding people, and so on. (And "who" in this case is much stronger. "Whom" introduces a jarringly pedantic note.)
  - comicjk 13y ago
    Yes, all this is the reason I said "if it's no trouble to you." Certainly the desire for politeness can go too far, but avoiding a handful of loaded words is not very far. I don't think it's quite fair to compare a black man not wanting to be called boy with a murderer wanting to be called innocent.
    - pg 13y ago
      It's no trouble to me to reinforce someone's mistaken feeling of superiority to someone else. The problem is for the someone else. So the threshold you propose is insufficient. And I nowhere compared the two cases you mention. (That was an extreme case of putting words into one's mouth even for HN.) You're acting as if I said for ∀x-P(x) when in fact it's pretty clear I said -∀xP(x). I'm done with this conversation, incidentally. I find that threads in which I have to say "no, what I said was" to this extent are always irrecoverable.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
  - DanBC 13y ago
    > There have been throughout history lots of people who on account of their birth or religion have wanted to be treated as superior to some other group. Would you just want to go along with that? But you could treat them as your equal until they do something to show they're not your equal, which is mostly what PC should be about. Don't reduce people to a single defining characteristic, because that makes it easy to write them off.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- PeterisP 13y ago
  You're not supposed to respect everybody - respect is a ranking of people on some scale, and respecting everyone equally means disrespecting those who deserve respect. For example, many people are great or okay at their professions - but not all of them. There are respectable and respected doctors, and there are those that just have a degree and a practice. Quite a few people have made unacceptable moral choices in politics, business or personal issues - and it's okay to disrespect them because of that, and publicly despise and shame those choices, no matter how it hurts their feelings and dignity. Respect honors people by drawing a line, by distinguishing them from the others you don't respect.
- PhasmaFelis 13y ago
  Was really not expecting to see someone get downvoted for suggesting that maybe people should try to be nice if it's not too much trouble. Have I accidentally connected to Bizarro Hacker News?

by pg 13y ago

comicjk 13y ago

How about respecting all people, if it's no trouble to you, in the way they want to be respected? And by the way, wordsmith, it's "the fashions are in whom you're supposed to respect."

pg 13y ago
I don't think you'd actually want to do that. There have been throughout history lots of people who on account of their birth or religion have wanted to be treated as superior to some other group. Would you just want to go along with that? In fact it would be impossible to do what you suggest, because the ways in which people want to be respected could be (and often have been) incompatible. For example, what if two people with different religions both want to be treated as believers in the one true religion? There are also plenty of individual cases we'd both find hard to swallow. Murderers who wanted to be regarded as upstanding people, and so on. (And "who" in this case is much stronger. "Whom" introduces a jarringly pedantic note.)
- comicjk 13y ago
  Yes, all this is the reason I said "if it's no trouble to you." Certainly the desire for politeness can go too far, but avoiding a handful of loaded words is not very far. I don't think it's quite fair to compare a black man not wanting to be called boy with a murderer wanting to be called innocent.
  - pg 13y ago
    It's no trouble to me to reinforce someone's mistaken feeling of superiority to someone else. The problem is for the someone else. So the threshold you propose is insufficient. And I nowhere compared the two cases you mention. (That was an extreme case of putting words into one's mouth even for HN.) You're acting as if I said for ∀x-P(x) when in fact it's pretty clear I said -∀xP(x). I'm done with this conversation, incidentally. I find that threads in which I have to say "no, what I said was" to this extent are always irrecoverable.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- DanBC 13y ago
  > There have been throughout history lots of people who on account of their birth or religion have wanted to be treated as superior to some other group. Would you just want to go along with that? But you could treat them as your equal until they do something to show they're not your equal, which is mostly what PC should be about. Don't reduce people to a single defining characteristic, because that makes it easy to write them off.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
PeterisP 13y ago
You're not supposed to respect everybody - respect is a ranking of people on some scale, and respecting everyone equally means disrespecting those who deserve respect. For example, many people are great or okay at their professions - but not all of them. There are respectable and respected doctors, and there are those that just have a degree and a practice. Quite a few people have made unacceptable moral choices in politics, business or personal issues - and it's okay to disrespect them because of that, and publicly despise and shame those choices, no matter how it hurts their feelings and dignity. Respect honors people by drawing a line, by distinguishing them from the others you don't respect.
PhasmaFelis 13y ago
Was really not expecting to see someone get downvoted for suggesting that maybe people should try to be nice if it's not too much trouble. Have I accidentally connected to Bizarro Hacker News?